As the interne continues to develop, online social interactions will become an indispensable part of people's daily life. In some implementations, social software can provide a variety of input expression functions. These input expression functions assist users with vividly and accurately expressing emotional intent through social software, such as instant messaging. As such, these expressions become a core component of the social software.
In some implementations, a user of a social software can utilize both dynamic expressions and static expressions to express emotional intent. For instance, in social software, a user can first preview multiple dynamic expressions in an expression package. The user can then select a to-be-used dynamic expression from a preview page. In some implementations, each dynamic expression in an expression package installation file includes two files. The first file includes a dynamic image and the second file includes a preview image. A user can use the two files to preview and utilize the dynamic expression, respectively. In order to accomplish the use of the whole dynamic expression, the dynamic image and the preview image are required. However, during the time when a user downloads an expression package, higher network traffic might ensue when the expression package installation is of a large size and the workload is high.